No because the Gulf of California is for Baja California, which is that little peninsula you see to the left. Baja California North and South are two Mexican states.

To be fair to Dr. Hawass, a lot of his work is actually around preventing archeological sites from degrading and getting vandalised. Dude is undoubtedly a media whore but he’s done a lot of good for the state of antiquities in Egypt.

In interviews, several Egyptologists said that most of what Dr. Hawass was doing for their field was long overdue, things as simple as installing air conditioning at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He has instituted zoning around major antiquity sites and built visitor centers to prevent further degradation. He also has plans to build regional museums in Egypt, including a sprawling new structure beside the pyramids.

In addition, Dr. Hawass has pushed through a law making antiquity theft a serious crime, and he has limited excavation of new sites in favor of conserving old sites and artifacts. “I made rules for people to follow, for the first time,” he said. “People don’t like this.”

“People don’t like dramatic changes,” Dr. Hawass said. “But I am well trained, and I believe Egypt antiquities needs this passion. I know who my enemies are, and I don’t care. They are the amateurs who want to drill in the pyramids, and the antiquities dealers we put in jail. The failures who do nothing in their lives. They don’t like success in general.”

Per https://archive.is/MbK19#selection-2215.0-2215.357

End world hunger:

-$37 billion a year until 2030 (https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-much-money-would-it-take-to-end-world-hunger/)

House all homeless:

• somewhere between $20 and $40 billion (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/opinion/sunday/homeless-crisis-affordable-housing-cities.html)

No idea how to estimate the M4A claim but yeah easily enough money to do your other two claims. Ridiculous sum of money spent on nothing other than suffering.

Becoming increasingly clear Trump has no idea what he’s doing and got no meaningful concessions from Canada (as there’s no “meaningful concessions” to get in the first place, Canada is already a resource colony/lapdog of the US). Bruv just loves the game of tariffs and deals. Not sure what the point of this charade was.

Want to note China is already dealing with the rebels, too. Some of them have lots of Chinese weapons, and they even made an agreement a year or so ago with a rebel group on their border to clean up the scam call centers there and hand over criminals to China.

The Chilean protest song El pueblo unido jamás será vencido (The people united will never be defeated!) has the exact same sing-along factor and vibe as Bella Ciao, I imagine it’s what you’re looking for.

Really looks like this is going to be another boondoggle African world war a la the Second Congo War (which never really “resolved” anything, this conflict is just the festering wound of that war). If South African gets involved more officially, I expect others to do the same.

I mean a ceasefire isn’t nothing. The genocide is obviously ongoing but a ceasefire is unambiguously good.

No, it’s functionally impossible.

“Fortunes disappear” is a rather large exaggeration I fear. Oh no, Larry Ellison’s fortune has disappeared, he’s lost so much wealth that now instead of being the second richest person on the planet he’s become checks notes the third richest person on the planet. $28.9 billion is not even 10% of his fortune.

So I’m only vaguely familiar with this because of the historical context with the First and Second Congo Wars (this is really the Third one), but Rwanda and therefore M23 (Rwandan-backed rebels) are nominally US backed. Rwanda is very much not a “tool” of American imperialism, they have their own agenda and Kagame is a very savvy player in leveraging (and indeed causing) chaos to Rwanda’s benefit. M23 directly benefits Rwanda by siphoning off the mineral wealth of the DRC, specifically in the Kivu provinces, which is where this conflict is taking place.

China has some mines in South Kivu, but I don’t think they care one way or another so long as the region is stable. They’ll play with the DRC or Rwanda. Russia has some mercs hired by the DRC.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon covers this thesis more broadly, that “tech” has stagnated and will never repeat the amazing productivity gains and life improvement we saw in the early 20th century because the jump from like computer to faster computer has no meaningful impact on somebody’s life compared to like getting indoor plumbing and electricity. Really well researched and convincing imo.

https://youtu.be/fJ0kYxFPM5Q time to reup this classic

This isn’t exactly true. If you download the TikTok apk from a third party site, make a new account using a VPN, and never turn the VPN off while using TikTok it works fine even with a US SIM/phone. Currently have this running with a US phone and US SIM.

Interestingly it doesn’t work even outside the US if you have a US account or just downloaded the apk from a US account on an app store.

EDIT: If you make an non-US account using a VPN and keep the VPN on to access the app it works fine.

India is too big to control by the West, and they ran a careful gambit by buying Soviet arms while not alienating the United States during the Cold War. India was a huge part of the non aligned movement and didn’t embrace neoliberalism until the 90s. Only End of History vibes fooled some into thinking India is a Western vassal state, but it’s very much its own thing.

Switzerland confirmed AES, nice

Nuke plants and electrify everything. Absolutely everything needs to be electrified, treat production needs to stop tomorrow, the global north needs to institute massive degrowth that won’t feel like degrowth to anybody but the owners of vacation homes, and we need a fuck ton of nuke plants. We can worry about removing carbon from the atmosphere after we’ve electrified everything, and can pour our new massive power surplus into super power intensive carbon removal machines that make no money.

Hey it’s my turn on the lathe ok